Tag Archives: Krzysztof Kieslowski

I admit to choosing who gets to be a “great director” with some level of arbitrariness. Generally, it’ll be directors whose oevre I’m trying to work through, thus reviews/reactions in this category will end up being something of a series as I watch more and more films by a given director. This time I’m lumping multiple directors together as I catch up. Also, the fact that these are all foreign directors is completely unintentional.

Jean-Luc Godard

Made in USAIn which Jean-Luc Godard tries to meld Pierrot le fou‘s visual and narrative style with an overtly political story. Anna Karina is looking for her boyfriend, Richard P—, who has disappeared under suspicious circumstances, perhaps the victim of a political intrigue. Along the way, she’s thrust into a world like “a Disney film starring Humphrey Bogart. A film with a political message.” She meets various other people who may or may not be helping her on her quest, who tend to break down into interesting but unrelated language games at random times. The overall effect is extremely pretty to look at, but essentially incomprehensible, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but Godard certainly pushes the limit of how little plot information he can give and still keep us watching.Above AverageFrance 1966; dir: Jean-Luc Godard; starring: Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre LéaudIMDb | The Frame | (not available on R1 DVD)

Masculin FemininA stylistic return to earlier films like Band of Outsiders, but thematically tending toward Godard’s eventual political turn in 1968. Paul (Léaud)is a student and frequent protestor against the Vietnam War; meanwhile, he cautiously (almost indifferently, though his indifference is probably a pose) romances Chantal Goya. I enjoyed the film, as I always enjoy Godard films, but I need a rewatch to talk about it competently. Again, like all Godard films. I know a few people who like Masculin Feminin best of Godard’s films, and Chantal Goya best of his heroines, but she’s still not Anna Karina. :) And the ending threw me off. Still, so did Pierrot le fou‘s the first time, and now it’s one of my favorite Godard films.
Above AverageFrance 1966; dir: Jean-Luc Godard; starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal GoyaIMDb | The Frame

Claude Chabrol

Les bonnes femmesHey, look! I’m branching out from Godard and Truffaut into other New Wave directors! This is Claude Chabrol’s first feature, following four Parisian shop girls as they go about their daily lives. It’s not one of his best-known films, and it feels like a first film – like he’s still feeling out the best ways to do things – but I ended up finding it rather compelling. At first the four girls seem very similar, all working at the same store, watching the clock until they can leave, going out at night, etc. But their personalities begin to emerge – subtly, so much so that I didn’t catch all the nuances until the second time through (I rewatched almost immediately because of not paying enough attention but then being so intrigued by the end I wanted to see what I had missed). Then one of the girls starts a romance with a biker who’s been following her around, and the film takes a darker, more ambiguous turn, definitely a turn for the better. Certainly interested in seeing more Chabrol films after this introduction.
Above AverageFrance 1960 (translated title: The Good Girls); dir: Claude Chabrol; starring: Clotilde Joano, Bernadette Lafont, Stéphane Audran, Lucile Saint-SimonIMDb | The Frame

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Blind ChanceKieslowski’s Polish films don’t have quite the same cinematic beauty as his later French ones, but Blind Chance has interest of its own in its branching, repeating structure – quite possibly an influence on Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. A man suddenly opens his mouth and screams, and the camera dives down his gaping throat, thus starting the first of three possible storylines. In each, the man runs for and either catches or misses a train. One outcome has him joining the Communist party, another working with the resistance. All are somehow concerned with the political situation and a given individual’s involvement in it, making it akin to Milan Kundera’s novels. The chronology is a bit more jumbled even than that, with some intermittent sections that I couldn’t place in the timeline, at least without a rewatch. (Heh, it’s apparently a trend in the “Great Directors” category that all the films need to be watched more than once.)
Above AveragePoland 1987; dir: Krzysztof Kieslowski; starring: starsIMDb | The Frame

Well, that was a remarkably consistent set of ratings across those films. I’d be tempted to knock the Chabrol up to Well Above Average, actually – it’s stayed in my head more than the others. And I’m pretty sure a rewatch on Masculin Feminin would also knock it up a notch. We’ll see. BTW, Made in USA is not available on DVD in Region 1, hence its non-appearance in the Amazon widget.

And I have a new record for most movies seen in a month. Since I’ve been keeping track, that is. But no more, for school, television, and Xbox360 have stolen my movie-watching time, and October’s recap is going to be fairly thin. Which is good, because then I can get caught up on writing and posting them. After the jump, reactions to Death at a Funeral, Celine and Julie Go Boating, 3:10 to Yuma, Butterfield 8, Breakfast on Pluto, The Double Life of Veronique, Starter for 10, Alphaville, The Color Purple (book and film), The Brave One, Knocked Up, Talladega Nights, Eastern Promises, Two for the Road, A Mighty Wind, The Optimist’s Daughter, Atonement, and more.

I contributed two short reviews to this post detailing Flickchart’s Top Ten films of 1939 – a good year of cinema by any gauge, and maybe one of the best. I got to do The Roaring Twenties and The Women (which is not one of Flickchart’s Top Ten, but is in my own all-time Top Ten). The rest of the mini-reviews are also really good!

Many of my classic film blogger buddies are already at TCM Film Fest RIGHT NOW – I won’t be able to get there until Friday night, but in the meantime, here’s my preview post at Flickchart that runs down some of the films easily available to watch at home if you’re not able to go to the fest, and some films that aren’t easily available at all to whet your interest in making it to the fest next year. Hope to see you this year or a future one!

Okay, so I produced this for my work (collaboration with my student worker – she did the rough cut and some of the b-roll and I added a lot more b-roll and some finishing touches), and I don’t usually post about my work but this one is such a cool story and has a movie tie-in.

“The demand for ‘originality’ – with the implication that the reminiscence of other writers is a sin against originality and a defect in the work – is a recent one and would have seemed quite ludicrous to poets of the Augustan Age, or of Shakespeare’s time. The traditional view is that each new work should be a fresh focus of power through which former streams of beauty, emotion, and reflection are directed. This view is adopted, and perhaps carried to excess, by writers like T.S. Eliot, some of whose poems are a close web of quotations and adaptations, chosen for their associative value; or like James Joyce, who makes great use of the associative value of sounds and syllables. The criterion is, not whether the associations are called up, but whether the spirits invoked by this kind of verbal incantation are charged with personal power by the magician who speeds them about their new business.”

“There’s an old story, borne out by production records, about [producer] Arthur Hornblow Jr. deciding to exert his power by handing [Billy] Wilder and [Charles] Brackett’s fully polished draft [of the screenplay for 1939’s Midnight] to a staff writer named Ken Englund. (Like many producers, then and now, Hornblow just wanted to put some more thumbprints on it.) Englund asked Hornblow what he was supposed to do with the script, since it looked good enough to him. “Rewrite it,” said Hornblow. Englund did as he was told and returned to Hornblow’s office with a new draft whereupon the producer told him precisely what the trouble was: it didn’t sound like Brackett and Wilder anymore. “You’ve lost the flavor of the original!” Hornblow declared. Englund then pointed out that Brackett and Wilder themselves were currently in their office doing nothing, so Hornblow turned the script back to them for further work. Charlie and Billy spent a few days playing cribbage and then handed in their original manuscript, retyped and doctored with a few minor changes. Hornblow loved it, and the film went into production.”